Tom Curren – Biography
Tom Curren rode waves like no other, so logically an entire generation attempted to surf just like him. But the painfully quiet regular foot from California was plugged into the unknown and thus impossible to follow. If surfing is art, Curren was the consummate artist, setting frenetic aggression, nonchalance, and boundless poetic vision into unique lines across the wave. If Rabbit and Shaun Tompson epitomized the “proper” channels to surfing success, Curren’s slightly askew personality and career path gave pro surfers another option, the occupation of “soul surfer.” But before his logo-less boards, guitars, and The Search; Curren was a mechanical competitor. On paper, Tom Curren was a great athlete, winning three world championships after dominating the American amateur ranks. But in terms of his effect on surfing performance and culture, he was transcendent. Writer Dave Parmenter even compared him to Jesus Christ. So is it wrong to divide pro surfing into BC (before Curren) and AC (after Curren) in analyzing the rise and re-birth of this surfing messiah?
The Rise
Born July 3, 1964 in Santa Barbara, California to a devout Christian mother Jeanie and big-wave surfing legend dad Pat, little Tommy began his journey early. First touching the ocean in Hawaii at 2 and then later jumping in full-on at 6, Curren was off and riding. Calling his father a legend is no understatement as he was one of the few who paddled out for the first ever surf session at Waimea Bay, and as a shaper and early surfing pioneer, he is world renowned. However, Pat bailed on the family when Tom was 17, heading south of the border and leaving the die cast for what was to become of his son, one that would change the face of American competitive surfing for good.
Years earlier, it became obvious that Tom’s quiet demeanor and reclusive nature hid an insatiable competitive drive. Although peers would later recall a far less polished style, Curren’s early surfing made him the NSSA golden boy who at 14 had embarked on a 4-year assault on the amateur ranks. He won the boys’ division of US Championships in 1978 and 1979, took the Juniors title in 1980, and then won the men’s division of the World Championships in 1982 (a contest for which he twice passed up prize money for the opportunity to enter). He was the first American to take the world contest since Rolf Aurness back in 1970. A year prior he finished 2nd to Shaun Tomson in the prestigious Katin Pro-am and then won the event a year later.
At age 17, Curren’s surf rich genetics, years spent riding Rincon’s groomed point breaks, and now extensive competitive chops culminated in a perfect blend of style and strategy. Already being touted as America’s only chance for a world title, he turned pro after signing contracts with OP and Rip Curl for a reported $40,000 a year (a veritable king’s ransom in the surfing world at the time). He quickly took the Stubbies Pro, proving his potential straight away. After competing in 4 of the year’s 12 events, he finished 19th in the world. The following year he placed 8th and then 4th the next until finally in 1985, Curren won 5 of the 21 events to take the world title.
The heat that sealed his win that year at Bells Beach is still regarded as one of the greatest heats of all time. He clashed with arch rival Mark Ochilupo who was the well regarded leader of the Australian resistance and the world’s hottest goofy foot. Curren later revealed to Surfer Magazine “…there was a period there around 1984 when as hard as I was trying I couldn’t get over a certain plateau, and my surfing sort of deteriorated at one point there, where I was over gyrating or throwing pizzas or whatever you want to call it (laughs). That just made things worse, and Occy was already on a different level at that point. In the end that period was all part of the big process, but yeah…it really bothered me.”
That process included a performance arch that began with subtle influences of Rabbit Bartholomew and a classic approach that would eventually root out all unnecessary movement not essential to maximizing the power and flow of the wave, moving a generation to mimic his every move (or lack thereof). Stylistically, Curren developed a double pump bottom turn that allowed him to cover a greater lateral expanse of the wave and coil more power on the drive to the lip. He quickly developed and then disposed of the dubious reverse head snap which was more flare than function. At 5’8” and a mere 150 pounds, he threw buckets of spray but he had yet to prove himself competitively in heavy conditions.
That was where Curren stood in 1985, as the first American world tour champion. That same year, he also protested political events(along with Martin Potter and Tom Carroll), boycotting the South African leg against Apartheid . The next year yielded more success when at 21 years old, Curren took his second world title (winning 5 of the first 10 events). But competitively he had seemingly peaked. He finished 15th in 1988 and then pulled out gradually from contest surfing altogether by the end of 1989. He holed in France where he surfed fabled beach breaks, played tennis, and spent time with his wife and two kids. But like all great artists, a little time away from the canvas builds inspiration.
In 1990, Tom Curren roared back to competition, laying claim to the first event of the year at the Coldwater Classic to make a red hot Gary Elkerton look shaky and rusty in comparison. He surfed through the trials of every event that year to convincingly win a third world title. A year later, that new competitive fire would again burn out but not before he handily won the 1992 Wyland Galleries Pro in meaty Haleiwa to garner the Hawaiian credibility that had eluded him thus far. There was one problem, he surfed the contest with no logos on his board. Although Curren would later explain that it was due to simple absent-mindedness, his longtime sponsor saw it as defiance and quickly dropped him.
Re-birth
Rip Curl knew the value of having sole access to the most popular surfer on the planet, a surfer beloved by kooks and purists alike. They offered him a reported 5 year/ 2 million dollar deal and The Search began. Billed as an on-going boat trip into uncharted territories, Rip Curl’s The Search followed Tom and an ever-changing group of surfers around the globe. In that venue, viewers were first and foremost glued to Curren’s incredible surfing (his first wave at Jeffery’s Bay is acknowledged as one of the greatest waves ever caught on film). But secondly, we got a glimpse of the Curren mystique. The contest machine in lycra shorts and a neon jersey was replaced with a long-haired vagabond clutching a guitar while lounging on the deck of a sailboat destined for the best waves in the world. In this venue, music provided another artistic outlet for Curren. He recorded an album with The Ocean Surf Aces in 1993 for which he toured the east and west coasts and later recorded music as part of the Skipping Urchins.
Globe-trotting and making music seemed to open other avenues of experimentation for Curren after he famously bought a second hand 1970’s era 5’5” twinner and proceeded take out top-ten professional (and tattooed wild man) Matt Hoy in a highly metaphorical moment in which state-of-the-art was rendered obsolete by style and grace. Although the public missed the fact that Curren ripped on 70’s fish mainly because he was the best surfer in the world, nonetheless, the population quickly ran for the second hand shops and boards hidden under backyard sheds for a new “experience.” The fish revolution was born. During this time, Curren collaborated with famed shaper and innovator George Greenough and was featured shaping and surfing his own boards in several surf videos of the era.
After seeing Occy’s meteoric comeback in 1998, Curren attempted another run for the title but found that surfing had changed, by degrees of course, but changed regardless. Fin slides and aerials were no longer the exception but the rule, and the relentless pace of the World Qualifying Series was no place for his mellow genius and eventually gave up the chase. Later interviews would reveal substance abuse issues resulting in a new found grasp on Christianity and a new ease with his place in surfing history.
He told Chris Mauro in Surfer Magazine, “I guess some people go on those thousand dollar cures with the Indians in the mountains and try to get away from this and that, to deal with it, but for me, it’s just, y’know, Jesus is there and he’s free, and he’s all I need.”
From his vantage point now with four children, a clean lifestyle, and still as one of the most eye-pleasing wave riders planet-wide, things probably look pretty good for this surfing musician. In fact, he has become almost as associated with his music as with surfing, cutting bluesy folk records and making appearances at major surfing events. He was inducted into the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 1995, was the Surfer Poll winner 8 years in a row from 1985 to 1992, and was honored as the 2010 SIMA Waterman of the Year.
Before Tom Curren, professional surfing saw a bloated ASP tour schedule packed with gutless beach breaks and surfers hopping four waves to the beach. After Curren, competitors today travel to select waves around the globe as part of a Dream Tour that values high risk and control in its performance criteria. Curren as Christ? It’s a pretty gnarly metaphor, but when Kelly Slater wrote his bio in Surfer Magazine’s list of “The Fifty Greatest Surfers of All Time” (in which Curren was listed 3rd behind Duke Kahanomoku and Slater himself), he wrote, “But when it came to surfing, in our minds Tom was Jesus.” That’s a pretty gnarly statement! Iconic surfing judge Jack Shipley calls Curren the greatest surfer in history. Curren’s boards Black Beauty and Red Beauty are part of the sport’s lexicon. His competitive dominance ended the Australian reign over the sport. He was the first American world tour champion, expanding the breadth of surfing’s touch on the world through intense media attention, thus raising professional surfing’s profile. Suffering in a Hellish 1980’s world of spastic gyrations and sinful small wave obsession, surfing needed a savior. Tom Curren showed us the light and changed the sport forever.
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